TrueJoshNight
Truly Dreadful Film
Colibel
Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.
Sanjeev Waters
A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.
Sarita Rafferty
There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.
Comeuppance Reviews
Jarrid Maddox (Don) is a CIA agent in L.A. who is working through some past trauma. When he teams up with fellow agent Vicki Taylor (Keith), he is tasked with getting to the bottom of what happened to a bunch of children that were involved in a top-secret government program. However, if Agent Oakley (Steele) is involved, you can bet this will be a (Capitol) conspiracy that goes...you guessed it, all the way to the top. Along the way, Jarrid - which is, evidently, how he spells it - gets into a bunch of fights and shootouts. Will he unravel THE CAPITOL CONSPIRACY?We were worried at first, at least after initially seeing the box art, that this might be an attempt at "more serious Don" - in other words, an actionless political drama. Thankfully, that is not the case, as our wonderfully wooden old pal The Dragon gets into plenty of fights, including the time-honored barfight, and his gun is always at the ready as well - though we much prefer the Martial Arts combat scenes. As you might expect with a Roger Corman-produced, Fred Olen Ray-directed outing, you get some punching, some kicking, some shooting, some nudity, a bit of plot and a smidgen of Barbara Steele and it's all wrapped up in about 80 minutes or so. It won't tax your brain or your schedule too much. Another thing low-budget actioners like this seem to have in abundance are actors that look like other actors. There's the Gary Busey guy, the Michael Dudikoff guy, and the Jake Busey guy, but, in all fairness, this might all be the same guy. Impressively, someone else looks and sounds exactly like Charles Napier. Just why they couldn't get the original Napier to be involved is unknown. Because it was 1999, our hero Maddox has Earthlink email that talks. Not only does it tell you that "you've got new mail!" (they probably had to add the word "new" to avoid legal action), but it reads your message out loud too. Welcome to the future. And Jarrid Maddox is leading the way.
A movie highlight comes when Maddox is on a plane, innocently trying to read a book. Suddenly two wrestlers - one wearing his championship belt on the plane - begin getting a bit too rowdy for their own good, and Maddox has to calm the situation down. Despite his painful flashbacks, the man can act independently as his own Air Marshal. He even gets the phone number of the stewardess for his trouble. Is there nothing the man can't do? Our point, really, is that The Capitol Conspiracy (or Prophet if you prefer) needed more scenes like this - unbridled silliness that brings the fun level up a few notches.
All in all, The Capitol Conspiracy may not be the best Don outing out there, but it's certainly worth watching, and it goes by without causing any undue stress or anxiety in your life. Unlike the victims of the aforementioned conspiracy. Also, the trailer for the film features footage from other Don movies that are not this one, in order to pump up the action quotient.
njldst
Its really hard to be critical about a movie because i really have a tendency to like any film i get. Even if it sucks i'd still enjoy watching it because it sucks. So when i give 3 stars here, it doesn't mean i didn't have fun watching it. But critically speaking, the movie just isn't good. The plot isn't very original even though it tries to make you think it is, acting is bad but not incredibly bad and the fights are just passable. And yeah, why do the people in these type of movies act so dumb?? And if these people have ESP powers enough to find hidden people and stop tripwires from exploding, how come they cant realize the danger they're in till they have a bullet in their heads??
autrata
There are few action stars I watch for their acting skills and Don Wilson is certainly not one of them. But if he is put in a picture with a weak and incoherent story and action scenes that are so lame and poorly choreographed, they make you weep, you have one bad movie. Don't watch it unless you enjoy guys shooting at each other at 20 feet with no cover for minutes and missing their targets, Don and his 'partner' parking their car and strolling leisurely although they are closely followed by the bad guys, Don leaving 2 rounds in a gun to allow the murder of an innocent man, just to expose a traitor.At one point two bad guys corner Don against a wall with a car, but he is fast enough to duck under the car before he is hit. The two guys pull back the car and naturally Don is gone. There is nothing else around, no other cars or hiding places. But the two guys get both out of the car, pull their guns, walk towards the wall and stare at the floor where Don should have been lying squashed. Don of course stands right on the car's roof and shoots them from there.There are many more scenes that insult the intelligence or strain the patience of the viewer (in fact there are few that don't). So unless you want to make a study of how many mistakes a director can cram into an 83 minute film, avoid this one at all cost.
darkdiva
I was lucky enough to get an uncut copy of this flick . I will be honest, I wanted to see this flick because of Barbara Steele. Although I do like The Dragon. Naturally I felt there wasn't enough of Barbara. Also, I felt the director lost an opportunity to create a really great story. I felt the experiments on the children wasn't explored as deeply as it could have been. Overall, the film is a very good action flick. Lots of fun for a rainy afternoon. I recommend it for both fans of The Dragon and the Queen of Horror.